


Freshmen

by gallifreyanlibertea



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 05:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12291939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyanlibertea/pseuds/gallifreyanlibertea
Summary: Alfred finds images of his boyfriend that lead the two to reminisce about how their relationship had been as high school freshmen.





	Freshmen

**Author's Note:**

> This was a collab(?) with a friend. A challenge, really. I was given a list of objects, actions, and dialogues, and I had to include all of them in a fic. 
> 
> Objects: Netipot, a single cactus spike, a single piece of corn
> 
> Actions: Alfred is upside-down, Arthur dabs
> 
> Dialogues:
> 
> “I’m a furry.”  
> “Know those bush-walls?” “You mean a hedge?”  
> “What capybara?”  
> “It was great! Only downside is, I forgot the law was a thing.”

“I don’t know why I had a crush on you, freshman year.”

And Arthur glanced up to meet the momentary gaze of a pair of upside-down eyes. It took him a bit of stretching, a bit of tiptoeing to get his head far enough above the kitchen counter to glare at Alfred as Alfred maneuvered his way back upright on the couch, from a position  _Arthur had told him would drive him dizzy with all the blood rushing to his head._ Those blue eyes were trained on his phone.

Alfred then looked back up, brow cocked at Arthur’s position hunched over the kitchen sink. “Or why I’m dating you now either, you freak.”

“Mock my Netipot one more time, I dare you.” Arthur huffed, and it was ridiculous really, the things Alfred would find weird. Arthur’s argument would, in turn, be to ask Alfred if he liked his kisses salty with the remnants of Arthur’s running nose, and Alfred would gag.

Much like he was doing right then. “How the fuck is shoving a pot up your nose your first sickness-priority?”

Arthur ignored him.

Alfred grinned, “I don’t know if you have a right to be uppity after what I just found, anyway.”

And it could have been some of Arthur’s old writing, which frankly, would have been a big enough blow to Arthur’s ego- or it could have been a backread of the texts he’d sent his friend Francis that night, which sported a saccharine-sweet block of text in which Arthur, in his sleepless hours, had droned on about how cute Alfred had looked asleep next to him.

Well, either of those had to have been better than the image Alfred had skipped into the kitchen to shove into Arthur’s face. An Instagram post dated back at least three years, of Arthur dabbing on the corner of where the McDonald’s drive-through ended, hair slightly-gelled, not a single ounce of shame hanging off his jacket-clad shoulders, with its collar all turned up.

“There he is.” Alfred had said with a snort, and Arthur frowned. “There’s that Arthur I fell in love with.”

Arthur supposed it was way back then, the year he’d discovered he was  _painfully_ homosexual- The year he’d discovered wanting desperately to be in the same P.E. class as Alfred wasn’t exactly just to have another class with a pal.

Er, well, the photo perhaps dated a few months before that discovery.

“If you look close enough, you can see the denial,” Alfred said with a snicker, as if reading Arthur’s mind.

Arthur put away his pot, rinsing his face. “And if you swipe left or right, I’m sure you’ll find pictures of yourself that ring true for the same thing.”

Alfred pouted, but nevertheless swiped, prodding at Arthur’s shoulder with a sudden hoot,  _“Babe_ , look!”

So Arthur was correct.

Before him was a picture of the Alfred that Arthur had fallen in love with. A mere child with a lanky build, flexing arms that at that time, he’d probably thought were the beefiest they were going to get.

Arthur stifled a laugh, “Oh yeah, I fell for  _a real man.”_

Alfred led them back to the couch and Arthur curled into his side, pressing his wet face onto Alfred’s shirt to dry.

It was calming, really. Arthur liked to think of it as a flash to what could easily be the future- staying over at Alfred’s house while both their parents had gone away for a weekend of paired-couples-pampering… it was what it would be like for the two of them to live together, to reminisce about the past as they were doing right then, Arthur’s hand in Alfred’s, with Alfred’s lips placing lingering, innocent kisses on the knuckles.

“Ol’ noodle-arms here skipped P.E. every other day,” Alfred said with a self-deprecating shake of his head and Arthur perked up with a memory that had come hurtling back to him, a grin playing on his lips.

“You’d stay up so late trying to cook up fake-vomit so your parents would keep you at home, remember?”

“With a single piece of corn added for authenticity, how could I forget?”

Arthur pulled away to snatch the phone into his own hands, scrolling through the out-dated feed as Alfred gazed over his shoulder.

“Oh god, Alfred, my skin.”

Freshman year was a vibrant time for the two of them, that was a given. Alfred snickered.

“Remember your skin-care phase?”

Alfred had been a great friend to have put up with Arthur then. A great friend to put up with all the weekends spent traveling high and low in search of an organic aloe vera leaf to soothe his red, blemished skin. A great friend to console Arthur when he-  _every single time_ \- managed to cut his finger on the single, rather blunt, cactus spike.

A great friend.

“How did we become friends?”

Alfred paused, brows furrowed in thought, “Well… you were the hotshot from England, why wouldn’t I have wanted a piece of that?”

“Because I was strange,” Arthur said with a laugh.

It was true to Alfred as well, it seemed, because Alfred sat upright with a start, eyes wide with the beginning of a joke.

“The capybara!”

Arthur blinked, “What capybara?”

“We-” A chuckle, “Don’t you remember the-?” a pause as those lips spread in a grin, “The day there was a vote for which animal would be our school mascot, and you wanted  _so badly_  for it to be a capybara.”

Good God.

Arthur could vaguely remember it now. He remembered having the entire class turn to look at him like he was some sort of zoo animal, he remembered parting his lips for the explanation his teacher had asked of him on his insistence that they submit  _the capybara_  as a mascot option. 

“The name means ‘master of the grasses’ and I thought it fitting, since we live in a prairie region… and it’s lifestyle is amphibious, which accurately portrays both our school’s popular football and swim team.”

And Alfred, who had been sitting behind him, had turned to say to his friend, rather loudly, “Is there no easier way to just say ‘I’m a furry’?”

Arthur had been livid. He’d turned around so fast he was dizzy, “ _I_ retained my information from doing a project on the Capybara back in England. I doubt  _you’d_  be able to recall anything educational, much less what you had for dinner last night.”

It was, as the other thirteen-year-olds called it, a sick burn.

“Well, what of it?” Arthur said now, and Alfred turned to him with a sunny smile.

“It was the day I realized you were enough of a freak to be my friend.”

A pause. A smile in response, spreading on Arthur’s lips. They turned back down towards the phone screen to swipe onto a whole new level of Freshman year.

The homecoming dance.

It was a picture of the two standing as far apart as they could in the frame, because  _they were just two bros at a school dance, two bros just chumming out, nothing else._

“Oh! Arthur, it- It was at those… the stuff in front of the school. Know those bush-walls?”

“Hedges, love.”

“Yeah, the hedges.” Alfred grinned, throwing an arm around Arthur’s shoulders, a warm squeeze. “I asked you to homecoming there, remember? As you got off your bus?”

“With enough ‘man’s and ‘bro’s sprinkled in to assure me you weren’t being gay.” Arthur mused.

“You still thought it was pretty gay, ‘cause you were-” Alfred pointed at the gap in the photo, “You were that far apart from me the whole night.”

A warm flush to Arthur’s cheeks. He let the phone turn off, turning to Alfred with raised brows, “At least, I wasn’t that far apart when you asked me again the next year.”

The poster had said ‘Hoco? (Full Homo)’, and the man holding the poster had been an Alfred- slightly more built than he had been last year, due to his sudden obsession with working out over the summer- sweating tubs and buckets at the thought of losing his best friend.

The Alfred after Arthur had said yes was one with a significantly brighter smile on his features, pulling Arthur into a hug with a force that crushed the poster between their chests.

“Ah, Sophomore-year homecoming.” Alfred mused, kicking back with a dreamy smile. “It was great! The only downside being that I forgot the law was a thing.”

It hadn’t been the first time, for Arthur, seeing Alfred get drunk at an afterparty, but it had definitely been the first time being the boyfriend responsible for hauling Alfred out and sobering him up.

“Thanks to your alcohol breath, we couldn’t properly consummate our first date with a kiss,” Arthur said with a half-hearted huff.

“We definitely could have.” Alfred corrected, “You just didn’t want to.”

“I don’t think you realize just what I mean when I say  _alcohol breath.”_

A pause. A chorus of two soft chuckles, two soft sighs, and Alfred turned to look at Arthur like he was a limited-edition item on some fast food menu, eyes sparkling with adoration.

It was something Arthur would never get tired of.

And when Alfred leaned in to kiss him, Arthur scrambled out of his grasp, “I’m sick, you idiot.”

“I don’t care.” And Alfred kissed him anyway. It was unlike their first kiss- a scrambled press of a pair of lips against another behind a tree in the school courtyard, teeth clashing, noses bumping.

Alfred’s hands cupping Arthur’s face were the same, however, as the ones that fumbled with their video game console as Alfred had struggled to gain an advantage against Arthur in whatever warfare game Arthur had pretended to like as a Freshman.

The smile on Alfred’s lips after coming up for air was the same smile he had tossed Arthur after taking that infernal picture in the corner of where the McDonald’s drive-through ended. And Arthur buried his face in Alfred’s slightly-damp shirt, letting those arms pull him into an embrace not quite as tight as the post-homecoming proposal one had been.

Needless to say, it had been a long while since they were Freshmen. It had been a long while since they’d been so small, since Alfred had been nothing but a child. 

Although, it definitely didn’t feel that way the next week as Arthur held a whining, complaining,  _sick_  Alfred in his arms. “Just use the damn Netipot already, love, I  _swear_  it helps-”


End file.
